Josh Benner

Category: Theology

  • People missed the significance of the first Christmas – but how do you respond to Jesus this Christmas?

    People missed the significance of the first Christmas – but how do you respond to Jesus this Christmas?

    There are the important days that we know are important at the time. And there are the important days when we only know of their significance with hindsight. 

    A couple weeks ago, we had the anniversary of an important day in American history when we remembered the 80th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks on December 7, 1941. 

    Other important days in American history. 

    November 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy died. 

    September 11, 2001.

    You knew those were historic days at the time. 

    And that’s also true in our personal lives. 

    There are some days that you know are monumental days at the time. 

    The day you get married. The day kids are born. 

    But as we begin in our passage this morning, I want to talk for a moment about the days that matter but that we don’t know matter until after the fact. 

    On June 28, 1914, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary was killed. It was a story at the time, but to observers, it seemed like a regional matter that wouldn’t extend much past Eastern Europe. In reality that event was the spark that led to the outbreak of World War I, the most destructive war the world had ever seen at that time.

    The days that matter that you don’t know matter. 

    The first time you ever heard of Covid-19 in China, you probably never imagined that it was going to turn our world upside down. 

    Think about the day the lightbulb was invented. The world was going to change but most people had no idea.

    It’s always a fascinating thought to me. That such significant days can be days when you don’t know it at the time. 

    I think of one of the most significant days in my life. February 20, 2017. It was on that day that I talked to a girl on eharmony.com who I thought looked cute. I had no idea at the time, but that was the first day I ever talked to my wife. 

    Think about the day a famous person was born. No one knows it at the time. A future president, or leading actor, or star athlete could be in the process of being born this very morning and we wouldn’t know it. 

    And I think of that with the events surrounding the first Christmas Eve. 

    Human history was about to forever change. 

    For people who lived in Bethlehem on that first Christmas Eve, their little town was about to be center stage to events that we’d be talking about 2,000 years later, events that were so significant that time itself is calculated by its proximity to them. 

    And for the average person living in Bethlehem on that first Christmas Eve, they would have had no idea. 

    Think about that. 

    SONG – WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

    One of my favorite newer Christmas songs of the last several years comes from the Christian band Casting Crowns. The song is titled “While you were sleeping.” 

    And the song considers this world-changing event. Christ coming into the world, and how it happened on – for many people – just any other ordinary night. 

    The song says: 

    O Bethlehem, what you have missed while you were sleeping

    For God became a man

    And stepped into your world today

    O Bethlehem, you will go down in history

    As a city with no room for its King

    While you were sleeping

    While you were sleeping

    The world kept turning. On that first Christmas and over the coming weeks and months, people continued to live their lives. 

    For the average person living at the time, that seems to be the most likely response at the advent of Christ. Unawareness. Obliviousness. 

    But there were some who had heard about the birth of Jesus. You have wise men who sought this newborn baby out. You have King Herod who heard the news but who was not overjoyed at the prospect of another king living in his territory. And you have Herod’s priests and scribes, those who were most learned in the Old Testament, yet who would miss the significance of the moment.  

    The first Christmas, many didn’t realize what had happened. But since that first Christmas, the rest of history has been turned upside down. 

    It was easy to be blissfully unaware of Jesus as a baby. But what do you do with him as a man? What do you do with him as a teacher? What do you do with him as a prophet? What do you do with him as a savior? What do you do with him as Lod? 

    Some will continue to ignore him, some will continue to miss the significance of who he is, some will continue to actively oppose him. 

    But will you come to him and worship him?

    It might have been easy to dismiss a baby, but that baby grew and became the savior of the world. That baby went to the cross. That tomb was empty on the third day. 

    What do you do with all of that? 

    Will you continue to overlook the significance of Jesus and who he is? 

    Or will you come to him and worship him as Lord? 

    People ignored and overlooked the significance on the first Christmas but what are you doing with Jesus this Christmas? 

    He invites you to come to him, to know him. 

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  • Jesus the Son of David. Matthew 1:1

    The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 

    -Matthew 1:1 

    In my last post, I talked about how Jesus is a prophet and priest. In this post, I will talk about how Jesus is also a king. 

    In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is referred to as the Son of David eight times. 

    The idea is important because the coming Christ was said to be from the line of David, the king who’s dynasty ruled Israel’s southern kingdom from Jerusalem before the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. 

    In the Old Testament, we see prophecies of one who would come from David’s line. 

    MESSIANIC PROPHECIES 

    In 2 Samuel 7, it was promised that one of David’s descendants would establish an unending kingdom. 

    2 Samuel 7:12-14: I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. 

    We also see this thinking in Psalm 89:3-4: 

    3 You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: 

    4 ‘I will establish your offspring forever, and build your throne for all generations.’ 

    One more, and perhaps the most well known comes from Isaiah 9. 

    A popular Christmas time passage, it says: 

    Verse 6: 

    6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 

    So it’s describing a child who will be born and it’s giving descriptions of him, and the next verse says: 

    7 Of the increase of his government and of peace 

    there will be no end, 

    on the throne of David and over his kingdom, 

    to establish it and to uphold it 

    with justice and with righteousness 

    from this time forth and forevermore. 

    And so it’s pointing to the Christ as the Son of David and Matthew 1 is saying that  Jesus is the promised one from the Davidic line to establish an everlasting kingdom. 

    KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

    Jesus is the prophesied Messiah who has come from the line of David. But he didn’t quite do things in the way people would have expected. 

    In Jesus’ time, there were various expectations for what the Son of David would be like. Some expected a great military leader or a great king who would liberate Israel from Roman tyranny. 

    Jesus is a great king. He’s the king of kings!

    But the biggest problem with the Messianic expectations of the first century was that their ideas about Jesus were too small. 

    He’s the king of the universe, who sits on the throne, at the right hand of God and rules and reigns in heaven.

    He was the the liberator who would liberate people from the tyranny of sin. 

    He did have a kingdom, but it was not just about a kingdom in Israel. Jesus came to preach the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven. His rule and reign in the world would extend beyond Israel to every corner of the earth, to people of every tribe, and tongue, and nation. 

    And the kingdom of heaven idea in Matthew is that Jesus came from heaven to preach the good news of the kingdom of heaven to a fallen world. We will one day be in his presence in the literal kingdom of heaven.

    As people from days of old longed for the day of seeing the coming Messiah in the world, our hope and promise is for the final and ultimate realization and consummation of his kingdom. 

    They waited for a savior to come into the world. Our hope and promise today is for that same savior to come again. To set all things right. To bring forth his kingdom. 

    But while we wait,  as the people of Christ in the fallen world, we have an opportunity to live today for the kingdom.

    ON EARTH AS IT IS HEAVEN 

    To live as kingdom people. 

    Jesus preached “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). 

    Jesus begins and ends the beatitudes by talking about the ethics of the kingdom of heaven. He taught the values of heaven in a sinful world. 

    In the Lord’s prayer, he teaches us to pray to God “your kingdom come, your will be done.” 

    Jesus tells us not to worry, but to instead seek first the kingdom of God. 

    Jesus will compare the Kingdom of Heaven to the pearl of great price, worth everything a man has. This kingdom is compared to a mustard seed that starts small but grows, like a net that’s cast into the sea and catches fish of every kind. 

    And as followers of Jesus, he calls us to live on earth as it is in heaven. 

    To love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. To love our neighbor as ourself. To make disciples of all nations, to be salt and to live as light in a dark world. Jesus calls us to treat others as we wish to be treated and to store up treasures in heaven. 

    Jesus is the king who ushered in this kingdom. 

    Descendant of the line of David. The Christ had to be. And that is why Matthew’s gospel will immediately go into a genealogy which will link Jesus to David and also to Abrhaam.

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    The photo is used courtesy of Wikimedia Creative Commons. For more information on the photo, click here.

  • Christ as a title. Studying Matthew 1:1

    Christ as a title. Studying Matthew 1:1

    The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 
    -Matthew 1:1 

     At first glance, it might not catch our attention that Matthew says Jesus Christ. After all, those are both very common words we see in the Bible. 

    Jesus is his name. We’ll actually see him given that name at the end of this chapter in connection to his birth. Verse 21, the angel tells Joseph to name the child Jesus. It’s a name that means savior, or the Lord’s salvation. 

    Jesus is his name. 

    CHRIST – A TITLE

    And Christ is his…

    Officially, Christ is a title. 

    Jesus is the Christ. Christ comes from the Greek Christos which means anointed. 

    Now in our day, Jesus and Christ are often said together, almost like a first and last name. 

    But something that’s interesting is the names Jesus and Christ together are actually very rare in the gospels. The gospel writers use Jesus. They use Christ. 

    But Jesus Christ? 

    For his entire gospel, Matthew does it only twice. This first verse and again in 1:18. We see Jesus Christ twice in John. Once in Mark, and never in Luke. 

    But then it becomes common in Acts – written by Luke, and we see it throughout Paul’s letters. Part of this seems to be a simple evolution that happened in the early years of the church where Jesus Christ increasingly became used of as the full name for Jesus. 

    And I point this out because one of the potential consequences of this is to lose sight of the significance of Christ as a title for Jesus. 

    As I said, Christ comes from the Greek word Christos which means anointed. The Latin word for anointed is where we get our word “Messiah.” So Christ and Messiah are saying the same thing. 

    And anointing refers to when people would be anointed with oil in the Old Testament. We would see this treatment for kings and priests, and sometimes prophets. Sometimes objects were even anointed with oil. The anointing was meant to symbolize purity, consecration to God, and the Holy Spirit. 

    So when Jesus is called the Christ, at heart, that’s pointing to his status as the anointed one. 

    And we see times in the gospels where Christ is clearly being used with as a title. 

    EXAMPLES OF JESUS CALLED THE CHRIST

    To briefly give a couple of texts which illustrate this idea. 

    In Luke 2, when Jesus is brought to the temple as a baby and a man name Simeon sees him. He’s an old man who’s waited years for this moment. 

    Luke 2:26: And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.

    Matthew 16:16, Peter confesses his belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. 

    And the idea of a Christ coming into the world was something that the Israelites were anticipating in the first century. 

    There had been others who had claimed to even be the Christ. 

    Before Jesus came into the world, there were various expectations of an anointed one and what he would be like. There were views of an anointed one, of a Christ who would come from the Davidic line to save the Jews. 

    MESSIANIC EXPECTATIONS

    To give a present day illustration. 

    It’s kind of like different views of end times theology today. There are all sorts of differing views for the second coming of Christ and what that will be like, when that will happen. 

    Well in the first century, there were lots of different ideas for what the first coming of the Christ would look like. 

    Some thought that the Christ would be a great king, others thought he would be a great general who would lead Israel in a military victory over Rome. Some thought of the Christ as a great moral figure of keeping and interpreting the law of Moses. 

    There’s some truth to all of those, but perhaps not in the ways people expected. 

    Some thought that there would actually be two anointed ones, that is to say, two Christs. Texts from Qumran, which is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found indicate a belief in a Davidc Christ who would be a king of the Jews and a Priestly Christ from the line of Aaron. 

    And given the long-awaited for, long hoped for, Christ who was to come, Matthew opens his gospel by saying that this man Jesus is the Christ. 

    He’s the Messiah, he’s the anointed one. 

    And we’ll see in his ministry that Jesus will embody all of the offices who were anointed in the Old Testament. Prophet, priest, and king. 

    And so it’s fitting that Matthew begins his gospel by pointing to Jesus as the Christ. He is the long-awaited Messiah for whom Israel had hoped. 

    Jesus is a prophet in that he speaks the word of God. 

    He’s also a priest. Priests in the Old Testament were the ones who performed the sacrifices and served as the intermediaries between man and God. They had extensive moral requirements and religious rituals to be able to do this. 

    But Jesus is the perfect high priest, he’s the greater priest because by the nature of his moral righteousness and divine nature, he is able to serve as the true intermediary between us and God. 

    Jesus is a prophet, a priest, and as we’ll see in another post, he’s also a king.

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  • The rest Jesus gives – Genesis 2:1-3

    From creation, we see that God had established a pattern for rest. Of the seven creation days, only the Sabbath is blessed by God. What the Lord has been given to us as a blessing is so often a challenge in a restless world. In today’s study, we also see the rest which Jesus provides.

    Sermon manuscript

  • Why was the cross necessary? Couldn’t God just forgive?

    Why was the cross necessary? Couldn’t God just forgive?

    A person might look at the crucifixion, look at what the Lord did on the cross, and wonder “Why was that the only way? Why was that necessary? Couldn’t God simply forgive us?”

    No.

    This is an idea I’ve heard from Tim Keller before, and it’s an important idea on having a theology of forgiveness.

    In any meaningful way a person has ever wronged you and you’ve forgiven them, when you forgive, you then bear a burden. You bear a burden for the way they originally sinned against you, and whatever you lost in the process: opportunity, time, happiness, money. Whatever it was. You were wronged and lost something. And when you forgive, you bear a cost a second time because you are relinquishing an opportunity to get even, to inflict vengeance upon them.

    And the worse the wrong is, the harder it is to forgive. The more costly the forgiveness, because it’s a greater debt that you’re forgiving. Not to say that people shouldn’t have consequences when they’ve committed crimes or acted violently. But even in those situations, we are called to be forgiving.

    But forgiveness is not as simple as just ignoring a wrong done.

    If someone destroys something you own, you can make them pay for it. That’s often what happens. Or perhaps you and the person can both pay for part of what was destroyed. Or you can personally pay for it. You can bear that cost yourself.

    My point is that in either event, someone has to pay. Forgiveness is not a write-off that where the wrong disappears and is forgotten about. Someone has to pay the price for what was broken.

    So with our sin against God, how does God approach forgiveness? All of the wrongs and injustices in the world. All of the wrongs and sins in our own lives, in our hearts, our actions.

    We could have never paid that price. We could never have done enough to earn our forgiveness. There was no hope.

    But on the cross, we see that Jesus himself bore the cost for us.

    That was the cost of forgiveness. The horrible death he died, the injustice that he faced. All of that shows us the cost of our sin.

    At the cross, we see the love of God.

    God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
    -Romans 5:8-10

    Because Jesus bore infinite wrath for sin. There is infinite grace when we turn to him. There is no sin he is unable to forgive. It’s not that he died and can forgive every sin, but he can’t forgive that one, or this one, or what you did, or what you’re struggling with.

    Infinite wrath because of our sin. But infinite mercy on the cross because of his grace.

    If you’re not a Christian, you need to know that Jesus paid for sins on the cross. Jesus showed that he is the way to God. Jesus died so that we could have a relationships with him. He promises eternal life for everyone who comes to him.

    All you have to do is believe in that. The Bible says that faith is credited to you as righteousness.

    “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:13)

    The Bible teaches that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12).

    And the proof of that is on the cross. Many other places where people look for salvation, where people look for life.  None of those things will give you life. On the cross, Jesus died so that you could have life.

    You can’t earn God. The cross shows us that. If we could earn it, we wouldn’t have needed Jesus to die.

    1Timothy 2:5-6 says:
    5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

    Jesus said “I am the way and the truth, and the life, no one comes to the father except through me (John 14:6).

    The validation for these things, what testifies to the salvation and ope that is found in Jesus…is the cross.

    Because he died on the first Good Friday. But he rose on Sunday. God has authority over life and death. God has authority over how to be made right with him.

    And while we didn’t deserve it, the good news of the gospel is that he made a way.

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    Originally published April 2, 2018